Former lawmaker’s actions tell all

In this photo taken Friday, July 5, 2013, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords greets Jackie Barden, right, mother of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim Daniel Barden, as local supporter Mary Ann Sosnoff, center, looks on at the Orchard Street Chop Shop in Dover, N.H. Three years after being shot in the head, Giffords is in New Hampshire to urge support for background checks on gun purchases. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)

By STEVE PEOPLES
THE Associated Press

Published: July 6, 2013;Last modified: July 6, 2013 11:08PM

DOVER, N.H. — Thirty months after she was shot through the head, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords sits in a New Hampshire restaurant facing parents of children killed in the nation’s latest school shooting.

They are here to talk political strategy, but Giffords doesn’t say much. She doesn’t have to.

The 43-year-old Democrat has become the face of the fight for gun control — a woman now known as much for her actions as her words as she recovers from a 2011 attack that forever changed her life and ended six others. Giffords has already traveled more than 8,000 miles this week, her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, at her side, encouraging political leaders from Alaska to Maine to have the courage to defy the National Rifle Association.

“I don’t think any of us thought this was going to be easy,” Kelly tells three parents of children killed in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, with Giffords next to him, nodding her agreement. “This is not going to be a quick fix. But we’re trying.”

The couple is nearing the end of a seven-state-in-seven-day tour across America, meeting with allies and opponents alike to generate momentum for federal legislation that would expand background checks on gun purchases. It’s a scaled-back version of a broad legislative package to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines proposed in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting rampage that left 20 children dead. But even scaled back, the measure was defeated in the Senate in April and has stalled in a divided Congress now preparing for its summer recess.

As Giffords’ tour stretched into Maine on Saturday, the couple shared a private lunch with former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, at their estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

It’s unclear if Giffords and Kelly discussed gun control with the Bushes, who are personal acquaintances.